Records: the Royal Company
The Business of Business… By way of the Crown Prince Edward, papers of incorporation were granted to charter a family business affair. This was a very visible poke at the French restriction on nobility underwriting merchant work. This wasn’t a trade guild or one of the few livery companies. Rather, this was a collection of people acting together to view a profit. Instead of relying in common law precedents of “[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_mercatoria Lex mercatoria],” they went straight to the top, establishing the organization with a British royal charter. Instead of being a trade association, this was the first Royal Charter that effectively created incorporated a single Company. This was pretty significant: at the time, there were only 13 such chartered organizations, and 8 of those were colleges or universities, not the least of which were the University of Cambridge (1231) and the University of Oxford (1248). Further, it was designated as a multi-industry company, making it the first officially chartered conglomerate in the world. Individual craftsmen within the Royal Company operated as subsidiaries, with an umbrella parent company providing a common identity (brand) to the group. This went right to the company’s coat of arms, which had a common theme, with variations depending on the tradesman. The Royal Company would be based in London and work with guilds and merchants there. At the time, this included the city itself, the “Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London” only officially chartered since 1327, the Saddlers' Company (1272), the Merchant Taylors' Company (1326), the Goldsmiths' Company (1327), and the soon-to-be chartered Mercers' Company (1394). Other loose trade groups did exist, but at the time hadn’t yet rated a charter. Stepping into an Uncertain Future When the Royal Company was granted their charter, it made major waves through merchant community of London. The Crown was going into business – and that represented a very different way of doing things from previous regimes. There would be facilities in London and Rainham, an ancient parish of 3,253 acres (1,316 ha) in the Chafford hundred of Essex. The title of the Earl of Essex, at the time, was being held in abeyance after the death of Humphrey de Bohun, 7th Earl of Hereford. There was consideration at the time for possibly carving out Chafford as a small barony to give Rainham political insulation. Rainham barely registered as a hamlet at that point, though it was right along the Thames – and they immediately got to work. The exact construction, of course, also included modern engineering and arcane methodology – but none of the arcane was visible to the naked eye. It was in how fast the stone buildings had been constructed, the effective insulation the buildings used, the hidden engineering that reinforced the walls against everything short of direct cannon fire. Staffing Miracles Richard was hiding miracles in plain sight, hiring the infirm and employing the unemployable. Those afflicted with late-stage plague (among other things) were cured, rehabilitated – educated – and put to work. He was reclaiming those in the worst condition, and reversing it to allow them to make a significant contribution instead. The educational part included new habits, advanced knowledge, and the discretion to keep absolute secrets – roughly what his Foreign allies had provided to him. While what he provided was several orders of magnitude less than where he was, it was several orders of magnitude more than anybody else on earth. Once the executives were in place, a wider band of employees were brought aboard… Projects on the Horizon It was part of the Vision experienced by Richard of Bordeaux: a deep look into the future. How deep, exactly, would never be known, but he did carry the Lessons of the Angels with him when he suggested forming the Royal Company to his father. These were the projects that were at the top of the industrial-commercial list: * Bricks and Mortar. Bricks were soft and brittle in England at the time. While Rick could think of better ways to build, bricks were modular enough to stretch from walls to roads. * Concrete. Was a farther step in the right direction. It was an ancient technology and had produced structures that were still standing more than a millennia later. This would be a good intermediary step, one that could be done by "mundane" engineering until the world caught up with magic. * Manufacturing and Industrial capacity. They need mass capacity to make the weapons to fight an enemy that had no seeming end. Not only they not have the ability to mass produce, they faced a post-plague labor shortage, * Paper and the printing press. This was about knowledge and learning. It was about data, information, tracking and eating the Tree of Knowledge bite-by-bite until they finished what Adam and Eve had begun. * Metallurgy. In a cast-iron world, stainless steel was king. In a stainless steel world, metallic hydrogen was king. For what was coming, God only knew. * Transportation. This was complex beyond most abilities to even imagine, but it started simple: walking. They needed to be able to walk around the world in an instant. They would develop every step in between, and they'd start it by pushing their carts to work without horses. These technologies had to evolve – and had to so around the world to face the future threat. The same threat that Richard could only vaguely hint at because the description was simply beyond the context of the world to understand. The other challenge: Rick had to make sure any new developments weren't turned around and aimed back at them. Bricks and mortar The Royal Company hamlet within Rainham needed to be built, but the stuff tough enough to get the job done just didn’t exist. At least not in England. Rick was looking at a couple of different masonry construction technologies: * Bricks and mortar. There was a cottage industry of bricks making (so to speak), but London techniques were fairly primitive against the standards current in Italy and Germany (which themselves were fairly primitive period). * Concrete. Had essentially been forgotten from the time of the Romans. The Royal Company quickly became THE major employer east of London, and one of the major employers from the greater London area. Within very competitive wages, the RC was single-handedly deconstructing both the 1349 Ordinance of Labourers and the Statute of Labourers of 1351. Both of those laws were seen as attempts to “legislate against the law of supply and demand” and were thus doomed to fail. Rick was the nail in their collective coffin. It was a quick turnover of base capital In Rainham, they built a kiln not unlike how Roman legions once operated mobile versions. That was enough to build large brick structures throughout the Roman Empire, stamping the bricks with the seal of the legion. The Royal Company version would be a bit more sophisticated. The first bricks were actually used… to build a bigger, better kiln. That cycle went on twice, through a few days – 24 hours a day – until they formed a brick-based foundation and had a brickworks. By the end of the first week, they applied for a patent on a moulding method of mass-forming bricks, the shapes of the bricks, plus sophisticated glazing techniques. There were different shapes, designed to fit together snugly and stably with a minimum of mortar, there were large and small versions, reinforced versions, water resistant versions and so on. The precedent for bricks and mortar Rick had his eye on two very achievable technologies that were very easy to create and utilize: bricks/mortar and concrete. For mass construction, like castle walls, he was looking to concrete, but bricks was going to be a quicker start for smaller project. They also had good utility for paving with easier replacement value. There was some development of bricks and mortar, there had been for thousands of years, but the bricks of the time in England were comparatively soft and brittle. The state-of-the-art bricks, though (mostly in Italy at this point), was easier to recreate to other levels given a little native creativity. There was business sense to it, too – and the crown needed money in the worst way. The best way to do this was to create overproduction capacity and sell it, sparking both a personal war chest and a more vital economy. Rebirth of Concrete Not long after the creation of stout, custom-engineered shaped bricks from the Royal Company, the public narrative followed that the investigation of better mortar led to experimentation into concrete itself. [[Records: reinventing concrete|''The Royal Company recorded the reinvention of concrete]]. It detailed the rediscovery of a new building material that was durable, fireproof and far faster than most other forms of stonemason crafting. This started as a comparative whisper, but with Northern England enduring Scotland (“We’ll build a new Hadrian's Wall!”), the Pale enduring Ireland and so on around the world, they were going to need a way to build strong fortification ''very quickly. Fortunately, they didn’t need to reinvent the wheel, they just needed to tap the precedents. The construction method soon became a hot topic. The conversation was both in using it, who would use it, and how it would be used. The stonemasons were agitated, as were carpenters, though both could conceivably play a role in it’s use. Supply and demand There was no word given on the recreation of concrete until the construction of Rainham was complete. Once the Rainham complex was finished, it was a prototype that built the concrete buzz to a fevered pitch. A few early adopters in London became new test cases. By January, the Royal Company was producing an endless supply of London Cement at new facilities down the river. Three Royal Company concrete technicians were lent out – and in turn, hired several London stonemasons to train in the process. They used a minimal steel rebar system, treated to prevent deterioration, and add structural stability. The base concrete structure was constructed, sealed and painted in about a month – about a quarter of the time it would’ve taken for a structure of that size using wooden construction (and about a tenth the time it would take if constructed of stone). With decorative additions and adornments, they were three beautiful buildings – and became incredible sales points for the concrete. The Manufactory Manufacturing, at this point, was at its nascent stage. Usually, the work was done by a single shop owner, perhaps with an apprentice and perhaps assistants (who were likely family members). Even native bricks production was little more than a glorified workshop. It was the nature of the industry at this point – every industry outside of mining – that it was a cottage industry. At this point, however, England needed serious output for both creating the foundations, sewers, walls and so on that bricks could build. This led the RANP/RC to create a division of labour and at this point invented proto-assembly lines in the first [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory manufactory] (what would eventually be shortened to “factory”). With the concept of manufactured parts (which would soon find application in the armories), the same number of laborers could come together, under the guidance of the expert to create mass-produced products – and they did. Helping to get the work done, the Royal Company had experimenting with the engineering of water-mill concepts. Everything they were doing for the printing presses could applied elsewhere in some form or other. There were already ideas for a brass mill that were going into the Metal Works project (in development). Paper and the Printing Press There were plans to go full-magic in this realm, but no matter their own output, people wouldn't use it even if it were in their hands because it was magic. Not that it was evil, per se, but it was intimidating. Paper was a necessary step to ease the end-user into a place where something more advanced could be employed. This meant paper and printing presses. Also, there was that whole toilet-paper thing... The Royal Company started with unused lands along the marshy south coast of England, where the Gulf Stream brought warmer weather. A sample of "kenaf" was obtained through sources, and kenaf forests sprang up within weeks of forming the RC itself. These kenaf farms would provide a renewable source of pulp for all types of paper. Likewise, the Chinese had working printing presses for ages but nobody had thought to spread the word. Until Richard "discovered" lost journals and documentation from Marco Polo, and used that as the springboard to recreate the printing press. This would blaze a trail on news distribution, books and education, religion... basically, everything. Metallurgy Based on his vision of the future, the world (much less England) was woefully under-developed. Especially as he looked at the post-Angelic threats on the not-distant-enough horizon. Rick wanted to pull the world through stainless steel in a decade or less, but simply dumping information on the world would result in the world using it against... the rest of the world. Through the Royal Company, he started movement toward a Metalworks. One step at a time, starting with the Royal Company Blacksmith, he was going to take steel that made Damascus famous – and make more of it than they could imagine was ever possible. 'Transportation' Mobility was an issue. That wasn't to say people didn't travel: there were 9,000 English who'd just spent two years touring the French countryside. Unfortunately, they'd been burnng and pillaging the whole time, and doing so mostly on foot or horseback. For the threats that Richard saw, response needed to be swift and agile. Right now, they couldn't even assemble a response, much less get it to where it needed to go. For that, they were going need transportation. This meant over land and sea... and when the world was ready for it, through the air. There were plans for the sea portion: they were going to go with galleons built by the RC, and that would be a decent transition to stabilize "home territory" until they knew what they were facing in the larger sense. Over land... that was a whole different matter. It wasn't just the carts, wagons and carriages, it was the roads and bridges themselves. From the brick business alone, that would be account for millions of the first run of bricks. As for the Royal Company logistics, they were already planning a revolution in the carts themselves. Category:Hall of Records Category:1376